Paymob’s $35 million pre-Series C, announced on September 21, 2026, was co-led by an Abu Dhabi sovereign investor and a European development bank, and the numbers behind it say the Egypt-founded payments company now earns close to half of its money in the Gulf.

Run the release’s own growth rates backwards and the shift is sharper than the headline suggests. If consolidated revenue tripled over 18 months while Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) revenue grew sevenfold to roughly half the total, the GCC was only about one-fifth of Paymob’s revenue at the start of that window. That is our arithmetic, not the company’s, but it means Egypt went from roughly four-fifths of revenue to about half in 18 months.

What the Paymob pre-Series C round buys

According to the press release reproduced by Wamda, the round was co-led by Mubadala Investment Company and the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), with British International Investment (BII), Global Ventures and DPI Ventures also participating. Paymob serves more than 390,000 merchants across Egypt, the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Oman, and offers more than 60 payment methods through a single integration.

The release states that “consolidated revenues increased by 3x across its four markets, while GCC revenues grew by 7x, with close to half of total revenue currently generated from GCC markets.” Since receiving its Retail Payment Services Licence from the Central Bank of the UAE (CBUAE) in January 2025, Paymob says it has onboarded roughly 20,000 merchants across its three GCC markets. The proceeds go to scaling payments acceptance and to new products for small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) merchants and for agentic commerce.

The raise lifts total disclosed funding above $125 million, after a $50 million Series B in 2022 and a $22 million Series B extension that the EBRD led in 2024. FWDstart reports the merchant base stood at roughly 350,000 at that 2024 raise. Set against the 20,000 GCC additions, about half of the net merchant growth since then came from the Gulf, which matches the revenue split almost exactly.

A sovereign fund and a development bank on one cap table

The EBRD framed its 2024 ticket around Egypt’s digital transition. Mubadala’s stated rationale is explicitly Emirati. Ali Eid Al Mheiri, Executive Director, UAE Diversified Assets, at Mubadala’s UAE Investments Platform, said: “Paymob’s expansion in the UAE aligns closely with our ambition under our MENA Venture Capital Fund to support companies that strengthen the country’s digital economy and reinforce its position as a leading regional fintech hub.”

Bruno Lusic, VC and Growth Investor at the EBRD, described Paymob as “a single, scalable layer that removes friction for merchants and unlocks growth across markets that have historically been underserved by digital finance.” Two public-money investors with different mandates are funding the same acceptance rails, one to support Egyptian SMEs and one to support the UAE as a fintech hub. The EBRD has been busy in this space: it also led the $22.5m Ominimo round.

Where rivals stand

A week earlier, Tabby raised $233 million at a $6.5 billion valuation, reporting more than $18 billion in annualised transaction volume and 70,000 business partners. (our coverage of the Tabby round). Tabby is a buy now, pay later (BNPL) and consumer finance platform rather than an acquirer, and Paymob’s pitch is to aggregate providers like it at checkout rather than fight them.

The release makes that argument directly: MENA merchants “typically require seven to eight payment methods – each with separate integrations, negotiations, and settlement cycles to reconcile.” That is the same orchestration case Yuno made with its $45m Series B, applied to a region where the release says BNPL providers, local card networks and bank instalment products all run in parallel.

Islam Shawky, Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Paymob, said the round will “fast-track our product roadmap to become the go-to payments platform for agentic commerce.” Paymob has not said what that product is. Specialists such as Natural, which launched agentic payments rails after a $30m round, are building from the agent side; Paymob would be building from the merchant side, with 390,000 existing accounts as distribution.

What comes next

With the GCC close to half of revenue and growing more than twice as fast as the group, the Gulf should become the majority of revenue if those rates hold, retiring the “Egyptian fintech” label. Saudi Arabia is where that has to be proven, since the only licence the release names is the CBUAE one. And a pre-Series C is a bridge: the Series C that follows will be priced on Gulf revenue, not Egyptian merchant counts.

For acquirers, orchestration vendors and banks partnering in the region, the takeaway from the Paymob pre-Series C is that MENA payments capital is following Gulf revenue, and public investors are now co-signing that bet.

Rick Steves

Rick Steves has seen business and economics through many lenses. He joined the financial services industry in 2009, and has been a financial journalist since 2011. He holds a degree in Business Administration and has experience producing real-time news, from both buy-side and sell-side, as well as for retail traders, brokers and service providers. Steves' work has appeared in a variety of online publications including FX Street, NewsBTC, FinanceFeeds, and The Industry Spread. Rick has great interest in the dynamics of the trading industry. The never-ending clash between technology, economics, regulation, and more importantly, the people.